Spy-accused ex-serviceman ‘used Facebook to make first contact with Iran’

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A former soldier accused of passing secret information to Iran and escaping from prison first made contact with an Iranian intelligence officer by sending him a Facebook message, his trial has heard.

Daniel Khalife, 23, found “middle-man” Hamed Ghashgabi after reading a news story about him being sanctioned by the US and searching for him online.

He was later told by his contacts to travel to a park in north London, where he spotted four of the “creepiest, scariest guys I’ve ever seen” in a car, who he believed to be linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, jurors heard.

In a transcript of a police interview read to the jury, Khalife said he produced “fake documents” to help convince the Iranians to trust him.

When police arrested him and searched his room at MoD Stafford in January 2022, they found a number of “completely fake” documents in digital and paper form purporting to be from MPs, senior military officials and the security services, Woolwich Crown Court was told.

The documents included a made-up letter supposedly from the then defence secretary Ben Wallace to the head of MI6 with a “set of orders… in regards to Iran”.

A fake letter from Penny Mordaunt MP to a senior naval figure described “the use of unarmed submersible technology to further the UK’s interest in the Middle East”.

Other documents fabricated by Khalife, many of which contained spelling mistakes, included one titled “Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe intelligense (sic) options”, and another with a Ministry of Defence header called “Iran’s nuclear ambitions”, jurors were told.

Speaking about his first contact with Ghashgabi, the former soldier said: “I found him on Facebook and made contact with him.”

He said the fake documents convinced the Iranians, who began asking him specific questions about his military role.

“Things started to get serious,” the former solider told officers, “they finally started to believe what I was saying.”

He told his contact he was in “some Gucci unit”, meaning an important specialist one, the court heard.

As his relationship with Ghashgabi and other Iranian contacts developed, Khalife was told to travel to London, his trial was told.

He cycled on a hire bike to a park in Barnet where he was told to go to a car park to collect money, the court heard.

“I wanted to see them,” he said, referring to the people who had delivered the money.

“So they came in some big expensive like 2020 Audi Q7, four blokes inside. The creepiest, scariest guys I’ve ever seen… these four RGT (Revolutionary Guard Corps) guys.

“(The money) was like in a poo bag. I’ve got a picture of it on my phone, It was £1,500.

“They took a picture of me and they drove off.

“I took a picture of this f***ing poo bag because they wanted proof that I got it. I was like: ‘Yeah sweet.'”

He later bought a phone, created a fake email account and contacted MI6, but received no reply, the court heard.

Khalife told the police interview: “When you enter this world there’s nothing you can do. You’re in it for good.”

The former soldier is alleged to have fled his Army barracks in January 2023 when he realised he would face criminal charges over allegations he passed classified information to the Middle Eastern country’s intelligence service.

Later, while on remand, he is alleged to have escaped from HMP Wandsworth in September 2023 by tying himself to the underside of a food delivery truck using bedsheets.

As well as the prison escape, Khalife faces a charge of gathering, publishing or communicating information that might be useful to an enemy, namely Iranian intelligence, contrary to the Official Secrets Act between May 1 2019 and January 6 2022.

He is also accused of perpetrating a bomb hoax in Beaconside, Staffordshire, on or before January 2023.

The fourth charge alleges Khalife elicited or attempted to elicit personal information about armed forces personnel that was likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism from a Ministry of Defence administration system on August 2 2021.

He denies all the charges, and the trial continues.